Hi everyone, I just signed up here because I have acquired an Apple IIGS for $50 and I want to get this guy up and running. Its a WOZ edition ROM 01
It has no added cards or extras under the hood and only came with a 5.1/4" floppy drive.

A little about me: I grew up in Jr high and Highschool playing/using the Apple IIe and owned one for years at home in the 80s I have not used one since the early 90s but want to get back into it without spending alot of money.
I have been an owner of two Amigas; an A4000D that Ive placed in a tower case along with a Video Toaster/Flyer system that still works today and a A2000 thats just used to play games on with the kids.

So my question is how do I get games to run on my IIGS given I dont have any 5.1/4" disks? I know Ive seen many placed that have the disk images of many of my favorite Apple games.

Unfortunately, most IIgs software requires a 3.5" drive, or hard disk. However, one of the coolest parts of the Apple IIgs is the extremely high level of backward compatibility with the earlier 8-bit Apple IIs. So if you can get some 5.25" disk, by all means do, and then fill them up with older Apple II games.

If you did have floppies, the first/best way to transfer disk images over is using a program called ADTPro. It runs on all modern OSes (under Java) and allows you to transfer via serial cable or ethernet (or audio on earlier Apple IIs with a cassette jack. If you need cables, the ADTPro page lists some.

Also, if you need floppies, check out http://retrofloppy.com. He's a good dude and regularly supplies Apple II floppies.

For a hard drive, you'd need a SCSI card, which aren't too hard to find, but then you also need an old-school SCSI drive. A much better option is to use one of the modern, solid-state storage solutions. I'm enamored with the CFFA3000. What's really awesome about it, is that it emulates hard drives, AND 3.5"/5.25" floppy drives. You can just download disk/HD images from the internet and copy them to your CF card or USB thumbstick and put it in the CFFA3000 and you will be quite happy!

Another solid-state option is the Microdrive IDE Turbo, which I use with a CF card. I just recently got one and am still playing around with it, so I can't compare it yet, but I think I may prefer the CFFA ever-so-slightly more. But the people that make the Microdrive are awesome and make a lot of very useful add-ons.

Speaking of, if it has no memory card, you will need one to run almost all Apple IIgs hardware. I'd recommend a minimum of 2megs, but most new cards are 4 or 8 megs because there's not any point in making a smaller version with the cost of those DRAM chips these days.

By the way, if you're wondering why an Apple IIgs would come so stripped down as yours and unable to run the cooler 16-bit games, one explanation is that it could've been one of many systems sold into schools to basically act as a replacement for the earlier 8-bit Apple II systems. So if you had a box of Apple IIe games, you'd probably have no problems running 100% of them as is.

Ok thanks, so I have gotten my hands on an Apple 3.5" floppy drive that I should have in a few days and I also got a bunch of new 800k 3.5" floppies. Will I be able to use them on my PC to get the game image files onto the disks?

I don't think you can copy them from any PC drives. I know there are a couple of older (Power PC era) Macs that can format and write 800k floppies for the Apple II. You might see if there's any way to do it from one of your Amigas, but I don't believe so.

I think the best option for you is to find a serial cable and use that to bootstrap with ADTPro. It's really simple, and if your PC doesn't have a serial port I think you can pick up a small USB-to-RS232 adapter.

With regards to ADTPro and the IIGS, I've had pretty bad luck trying to use a regular serial cable (8-pin mini DIN to 9-pin DB9). With 2 different chipset USB-DB9 adapters on two different laptops, one cable won't work at all while the other cable works fine to bootstrap the disk over but fails completely to work most other times. I've had much greater success using a Super Serial Card in my GS (as well as my IIe). ADTPro web site has good info on how to setup, but in case the jumper plug is missing (like one of my SSCs) I'll be happy to post a photo of the internals of the plug. Pretty simple to build once you see it.

RCJimMessages: 1Registered: October 2016 Location: Midwestern River City

Poster

Hi Tony,

About your question on putting/moving programs and/or disks from 5.25" disks to 3.5 disks, that varies, depending upon what Apple II operating system any programs require to operate.

On Apple II's, the main programs are DOS 3.3 (Disk Operating System - the second or so OS under which disks for Apple II's would be formatted - I won't get into 13-sector DOS, which others can correct me, but I think were DOS 3.2 maybe), and ProDOS (see Dr. Steve Weyhrich's page on DOS and the Disk ][ drives - aka Disk II drives - here: apple2history.org/history/ah15/

Big differences are, under DOS 3.3, a disk that was formatted has the boot code to start up an Apple II (and some have startup programs which will then run (sort of like a PC hard drive under Windows that may have a program on it which autostarts if it's the boot drive). Under ProDOS, the disk doesn't automatically have any operating system on it; those disks will show an error message about being unable to load the ProDOS.SYSTEM file (or other System file -, another ProDOS difference from DOS 3.3).

Actually, Dr. Steve's site (Apple II History -apple2history.org - can fill you in and answer a lot of questions about Apple II's, Apple II disk drives of various forms, and a lot more. He has an excellent book version of the site as well, if you'd prefer an "analog" version...

Short version is that on Apple II's, as on PC disks, you can have 'data' disks, as well as disks with operating system(s) on them (aka 'boot' disks). To boot up, you need (using ADT2Pro, as was already mentioned) to transfer an Apple II version of ADTPro from another computer (a PC in your case, right? across the cable to the Apple IIgs, and then that Apple II (ADTPro) program can help move the operating system and/or disk contents over the cable to your diskettes on the IIgs (whether 3.5 or 5.25 inch size). The other members also are accurate in mentioning that having a CFFA or IDE MicroDrive or a (SCSI) hard drive will be something well worth the time and money. Ask someone here about the good ol' "Floppy shuffle"... (where you need to run a program or - worse yet - make a copy of a disk - with only ONE (5.25 or 3.5 inch) disk drive. Teeeedious!!

ADTPro would be the way to go, and if you can get a second 3.5 inch drive (and that extra RAM others mentioned) or hard rive, that/those will help a bunch! You will thank yourself multiple times for putting the money toward the second (or digital) drive and the RAM upgrades.

Do take a look at Dr. Weyhrich's Apple II History site (or just buy the book), though.